Wednesday, August 26, 2009

So what is this cool breeze?

It is time for an explanation! Some of this might be quite a lot to digest and accept initially, but read on, and you too might feel it.

In this first personal report, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi is conducting an introductory programme of Sahaja Yoga, to give Self Realization. The newcomers are told they have this experience when they feel a cool breeze coming from their own bodies. Sahaja Yoga is extremely simple. The first stage is to get Self Realization.

In many scriptures this experience is reported as being accompanied by a wind, or coolness, for example the wind of the Holy spirit in the Christian bible, or the 'sali lam' or cool wind which accompanies the awakening of Kundalini, necessary to attain 'moksha', or realisation of the self as spirit, in the Hindu tradition. It is interesting that in many languages, the word for Holy Spirit, or Adi Shakti as it is in Sanskrit, is a feminine noun. Christ used an Aramaic word which was feminine, and in Islam, the word is feminine: 'ruh'. In at least two African languages, Zulu and Xhosa, the word for Holy Spirit and cool wind are the same: imoyo.

'My family and I live in Sydney, Australia. I was never what is termed a seeker. My brother was always looking for something, and said he would tell us once he found it. One memorable day, in the early 1980's, I was seated in front of the television watching a football game, when my brother came home and said the most incredible thing had happened.

He had just met an Indian lady called Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and had received his Self Realization. He told me he had spent the day with her and a group of people and he had felt an incredible cool wind coming from her body, when he put his hands in her direction.' (C. K.)

In this account, a young man reports feeling this coolness coming from Shri Mataji herself. Shri Mataji is an extremely powerful spiritual personality, and as she has said on many occasions, she has come on this earth to give en masse Self Realization to all those who are sincerely seeking inner fulfillment. She explains that this coolness is a very subtle form of vibrations, and it is felt as a cool wind or breeze. As she is the one who has opened the way to this en masse awakening for all the rest of us, it is hardly surprising that even her body radiates this coolness very powerfully.

'I got my Self Realization in August 1979. The first strong experience was when Shri Mataji invited some of us to her flat in London a little later. Before getting my realization, I had been experimenting with different forms of consciousness, and seeking for something, but unfortunately it had caused me to have all these voices going on in my head all the time in those days.

Shri Mataji got me to put my left hand towards her and the right hand towards a candle flame. After some minutes all the voices in my head stopped and a cool breeze just came blowing into my forehead. It was a lot easier to be experience inner peace and inner stillness after that.

Some months later, a woman and her brother brought a sixteen year old boy who had cancer to Shri Mataji's house in Brompton Square, London. I was doing some decorative work, maybe painting or wallpapering, in the same room where Shri Mataji was curing this boy.

He was so weak, he couldn't even sit up. She had him lying down. She called me over to help as well.

"What do you feel?" She said. I felt incredible heat coming from him. Shri Mataji gave him healing vibrations on his Nabhi chakra, at the level of his waist. I was feeling it all and, maybe after twenty minutes or so, it was just blowing cool. I saw and felt Shri Mataji cure this boy of cancer. What a tremendous experience. After being almost carried in, he walked out, full of energy.' (J.W.)

This young man had some sort of imbalance, and when he is cured he feels this same coolness. He gives a short account of how he is healed, which anyone who practises Sahaja Yoga quickly learns about. The same man is involved in helping to cure someone, and whereas when the boy is clearly ill he feels heat coming from him, once he is better he feels coolness radiating from his body. In any system heat indicates friction and often a problem. Once a person has Self Realisation he or she can become sensitive to this subtle heat or coolness, and can also learn how to direct these subtle vibrations to help heal people of diseases.

'I was at a public meeting in about 1978, in London. I had been coming to Sahaja Yoga for a few months and a Sahaja Yogi gave me vibrations, particularly on my Agnya, (forehead). All of a sudden, I began to feel a tremendous cool breeze flowing.

In those days, Shri Mataji used to come by and talk to each one of us.
"Are you feeling the cool breeze?" She asked.
"Yes," I replied.

Then she told me to put one hand towards her and one hand towards a long-haired person who was next to me. The hand towards Shri Mataji felt this fantastic cool breeze, whereas the one towards this guy felt tremendous heat. As I was doing that, this man, a complete stranger, turned around to me and for no apparent reason said something like he didn't like me at all. It was the first time I had felt the difference between the cool and the heat.' (B.K.)


This writer, an aerospace engineer from Singapore and now settled in America, also shows how the cool breeze indicates positivity whereas heat indicates some problem.


'My mother went to an introductory programme of Sahaja Yoga and received her Self Realisation. She came home with a photo she had been given of Shri Mataji, the lady who started Sahaja Yoga.

My mother showed me the photo and two extraordinary things happened. Firstly, for no apparent reason, I smelled a very strong and beautiful aroma of roses, and then I felt a cool breeze coming from the photograph. The following week I went along to the Sahaja Yoga programme too.' (R.I.)

This young woman, who comes from Italy, feels the coolness coming from a photograph of Shri Mataji. We find by experience that photographs of Shri Mataji, and anything She touches emits the same coolness. In a sense the matter is transformed.

Many people have been healed of serious diseases and others have gained Self Realization from the photograph of Shri Mataji, without ever meeting her. The beautiful smell of roses has been experienced by many people in the vicinity of Shri Mataji, her photo, or places where she has visited, even some time after she has left.

'My mother and I have been involved with Sahaja Yoga for many years. She never misses a chance to take me to an art gallery, but one visit stands out. We were in Milan, Italy in 1998. It was a warm day and we went to the Castello Sforzesco. We walked around for about an hour, until we reached the room which has the Rondanini Pietà by Michelangelo in it.

There were some benches, and being hot and tired, we sat down to look at the statue. We both suddenly felt a blast of cool wind, like air conditioning on full. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the statue.

"You've got strong air conditioning on in here," my mother said to the attendant.
"No, signora, there isn't any in here," he said, looking rather puzzled.
"That was a bit slow of us," laughed my mother, "after all, Michelangelo was a realised soul."' (A.W.)

The mother and daughter feel a powerful cool wind coming from a great work of art. This is a continuation of what has been written above. Because Michelangelo was a realized soul, his artworks emit good, or cool vibrations. And how does one know he was a realized soul? Because if a Sahaja Yogi puts his or her attention on him, a coolness will be felt on the palms of the hands.

Originally published by Oleg Florov on Geocities, which will be shutting down in 2009. The stories and explanations below have been collected from a number of friends and acquaintances around the world, all of whom also have this very special awareness on a daily basis. We hope that you too will enjoy it, and you may easily, if you browse through the following web pages. Central to what we would like to share with you is our gratitude to Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, who, through her gift to the world of Sahaja Yoga, makes it all possible.

"Can the Air Conditioning be Turned Off?"

'We were in Athens in October 2001. It was a warm evening and Shri Mataji was giving a public programme, an introduction to Sahaja Yoga, in a hotel there. In many traditions, one of the signs of Self Realization, or as the Christians say, the awakening of the Holy Spirit, is a cool wind or breeze.

At the end of the programme, Shri Mataji gave the experience of Self Realization or kundalini awakening. Nearly all the people who had come for the first time said they had indeed felt a cool breeze, on their hands and above their heads, but some insisted it was the air conditioning. Someone went to find the hotel staff to ask them to please turn it off, and the staff, when found, said it was not on in the first place.'

-- (M.S.)

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Wisdom from Gujarat

The tiny state of Gujarat that sits north of Maharashtra, is home to Mahatma Ghandi. Literature from Gujarat is quite rich and contains significant quantities of travelogues, observational humor and rustic wisdom. It has relatively fewer saints, vis-a-vis the state of Maharashtra. When I was forwarded some couplets/aphorisms in the regional language of Gujarati, I was pleasantly surprised at their depth and could not resist translating them and share it. Who ever compiled these, saved the best one for the last:

Measured words and measured fire
Tie the ties of wedlock
Excessively use the former
And the bonds will catch the latter

Earthly life is akin to earth
Shower it with tears too often
And surely it turns to muck

Life is to be cherished
As one would value ice
As the past and future of both are fluid,
only the 'present' is tangibly real

Some questions will continue to persist
The wealthy ones will keep on asking:
"What can I do to stir some hunger in me?"
The poor ones will keep on asking:
"What will I do when the hunger stirs in me?"

Life, you art irony
The day laborer lifts five bags of wheat,
but cannot affort a single
The money lender can buy all five,
but lift not even one


And finally...

If life ceases, but soul's desires do not:
Death has surely come
If the desires cease, but death is still afar,
Liberation has surely come



Friday, June 5, 2009

Who is your favorite Greek Tragedian? Or the Saga of the Duex ex Machina



Vedic lore has less heroes than herioc Godesses. It does not have logical situations where rational negotiations have given resolution. And this is not just written dramatics, as in Greece, but in almost every challenge that faced human existence.



The divine drama that almost always gets played out is:



Act 1: Trouble brews when powerful entities gain blessings and start their reign of terror on earth.



Act 2: The reign of terror takes the pain to the extreme and the troubles of earthly life become quite unbearable. When humanity is unable to resolve the situation, they begin praying for divine intervention, which acts in a sure shot way. An incarnation which brings about a long term solution to the miseries of the populace



Act 3: The battle for earth begins between the forces of good and evil. The forces of good more often than not lead by a female incarnation of the divine, which prevails, establishing peace, justice and happiness for generations to come.



This three act play of the divine always depends, and is orchestrated by the Goddess divine, the duex de machina.



While the Greek-Romantics rejected the use of divine intervention as a plot device in their story telling, it was very much a fact of life. The Greek tragedian Euripidis was criticized for overuse of duex ex machina for giving resulutions to the story and so was the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But real battles for the earth were always resolved by none other than this phenomenon.



Euripidis, you just became my favorite Greek tragedian*.



* as if I know many others....

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Star Trek: Destruction by Alcohol

Alcohol and its effects on humans are well explored in the episode "The Naked Time", and how. A drunk Irishman from the Enterprise crew turns off the ships engine as its orbiting a collapsing planet and thats when the fun begins. The episode contains gems such as, a shirtless Sulu wandering the hallways with a sword, Scotty saying "I cannot change the laws of physics", traveling backwards in time and other geeky astrophysics fun. And best of all? Discovering the formula to travel back in time, how exciting.

Star Trek: The Original Series / The Naked Time

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Star Trek: Posession

Star Trek: The Original Series was excellent for taking on fringe questions like race, greek gods and in the case of Episode "Operation Annhilate", posessions. The episode explores the parasitic mechanism, effect on hosts (physical & psychological-behavorial), complexity of curing and means of working around it. Must watch!

Star Trek: The Original Series / Operation Annihilate

I will let you watch the episode and conclude how close the writers come to the "cure" for posessions in this story. Its fun to watch how Spock shows his failing resistence to the parasite posession with twitches. Credits to writer

Monday, May 11, 2009

Self Realization better than "Happiness Surgery"?

Attending a talk on gaming in education, I heard the keynote speaker mention the well known link between the vagus nerve and emotions. Game-designers want to add features and events which will result in vagal stimulation - i.e., send "happy waves to the brain".

Here is a small animation to help you place the nerve within us:




Searching for more information, there seemed to be two main applications in the medical field (a) An FDA approved Treatment for depression when "all else has failed" and (b) Treatment for overeating. The common theme here is satisfaction and contentment, rather than happiness and sadness, IMHO.

For the depression application, long story short, this is an FDA approved treatment option, applied usually when most treatments have not worked (Mayo Clinic). The 'aha-moment' for me came when I saw the info-graphic showing how this is achieved - through a pace-maker. The location of the pace-maker in the graphic made it even simpler to understand:





Vagus nerve stimulation at Mayo Clinic

In Sahaja Yoga, the method to achieve balance, harmony and joy is based on awakening the spirit, "self-realization". Sahaja means born within. Born with us is the heart with the spirit within. In it's awakened state the spirit would keep us in joy, which is the characteristic. However there is a disconnect, caused by imbalance which stops the pulsations of the heart from acting on our central nervous system and transferring the joy of living. This blanket of darkness, called ego, when exceeds it's boundries, envelopes the heart and literally becomes the kill-joy.

Sahaja Yoga explicitly connects oneself with one's spirit, bringing the qualities and contributions of the human spirit onto the central nervous system. Before implaning a battery driven vagus-stimulating pacemaker, I would highly recommend trying the option of self-realization - awakening the spirit to reconnect and send those "happy pulses" from the heart to the vagus nerve and eventually the brain.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and I do not play one on this blog!